Look Good! Buy a book!

[nbcrusader]

Just don't bother reading it.

Books: Seen, and Not Read

Dec. 5, 2005 issue - There are the books we read, the books we mean to read, and then there are the ones—c'mon, admit it—that mainly just look impressive on the shelf. Take "A Brief History of Time": the classic has sold more than 10 million copies and is hailed as brilliant—but good luck finding people who've finished it.

A recent study of 2,100 Brits found that more than a third of them buy certain titles solely to look intelligent—a bit of statistical confirmation of "book snobbism," something long suspected in literary circles.

 

[Liesje]

I typically won't buy a book until after I've read it and decided it was good enough to want to read again someday, or informative enough that I'd reference it requently. This is also the case w/ selling my textbooks - there's a select few that I'll keep/would like to have kept for future reference (West's Business Law which I bought for only $8 and sold for $65 (new is $135) but wished I had it, a good business writing textbook/workbook, the Microsoft Access text/workbook since I suck at Access).

 

[Dismantled]

I rarely buy books, libraries are free

I occassionaly buy a cookbook or if a book is really interesting.

 

[stammer476]

I'm not going to read this thread, but I did subscribe to it.

 

[Irvine511]

i've been too busy reading "infinite jest" (which sits right next to my copies of "underword," "the corrections," and "gravity's rainbow") to respond to this thread.

carry on.

 

[financeguy]

I have read most books in my bookshelf. Including A Brief History of Time. It's actually quite short. I suspect it is over simplified however. If I leafed through a college level Astrophysics textbook it would be double dutch to me.

 

[BonosSaint]

I'm the opposite. I read books I wouldn't carry in public.

 

[Dismantled]

I'm the opposite. I read books I wouldn't carry in public.

Harry Potter

 

[Angela Harlem]

Chalk me up as a reading whore, too. I'll read anything that sits still long enough

 

[Kieran McConville]

i read the jam jar. over and over for hours, approximately 2.5 hours.

 

[yolland]

Many booksellers nowadays specialize in "books-by-the-foot," where you can buy just that for the purpose of giving your posh new built-in bookshelves an instant, prefab monument to your own nonexistent appreciation for the literary arts. Most often these consist of classy-looking sets of faux-leatherbound, embossed copies of "the classics."

We have in our own home library a fancy but utterly useless complete Shakespeare that someone gave us as a wedding present. The binding is lovely and our enthusiasm for the content genuine, but unfortunately, like most one-volume Shakespeare collections sold in stores, it has no annotations, making it pretty much worthless for actual reading use.

I got a laugh out of seeing Roy's God of Small Things mentioned in there, because I just recently got around to reading that and afterwards I thought, "Well, she's a photogenic lady with props from all the right dissident luminaries, but there is no way in hell six million people read this book."

 

[dandy]

Chalk me up as a reading whore, too. I'll read anything that sits still long enough

me too.

i have a couple of friends who actually buy books because they're "pretty," and one acquaintance who goes out of her way to leave certain books lying around when people come over, to make her "look smart." do people not ask about the books and notice that she's really an idiot?

i have a massive collection of books, and i'm proud to say i've read pretty much all of them, but for the huge pile of must-reads by my bed. i read everything i can get my hands on.

and, for the record, i loved the god of small things.

 

[MissMaCo]

I have loads of books and I read them. I don't feel ashamed tho

Books

 

[mattgerth]

"A Brief History of Time": the classic has sold more than 10 million copies and is hailed as brilliant—but good luck finding people who've finished it.


I've read it several times......I guess I am an impressive snob!

 

[Irvine511]

I got a laugh out of seeing Roy's God of Small Things mentioned in there, because I just recently got around to reading that and afterwards I thought, "Well, she's a photogenic lady with props from all the right dissident luminaries, but there is no way in hell six million people read this book."

funny ... i would never put God of Small Things on my bookshelf because i don't think it has much literary value at all.

sorry, but she rubs me the wrong way.

just saying is all ...

 

[yolland]

Originally posted by Irvine511
funny ... i would never put God of Small Things on my bookshelf because i don't think it has much literary value at all.

I found it quite overrated myself, though it certainly was something new and different for Anglo-Indian fiction, and I enjoyed her portrayal of life in Kerala, surreal though it was. But yes, relative to other "major literary successes" of the last several years, it seemed like a rather half-baked mishmash of various poorly knit pomo styles. IMO.

She did get in a lot of trouble with the censors in India, ostensibly for the taboo Dalit/Vaishya romance--though I suspect the brother-sister incest, child molestation, etc. also had something to do with that.

 

[Irvine511]

I found it quite overrated myself, though it certainly was something new and different for Anglo-Indian fiction, and I enjoyed her portrayal of life in Kerala, surreal though it was. But yes, relative to other "major literary successes" of the last several years, it seemed like a rather half-baked mishmash of various poorly knit pomo styles. IMO.

She did get in a lot of trouble with the censors in India, ostensibly for the taboo Dalit/Vaishya romance--though I suspect the brother-sister incest, child molestation, etc. also had something to do with that.

i haven't read it since i took post-colonial fiction my sophomore year in college, though i do remember it paling in comparison to most of the other stuff we read -- Rushdie, Naipal, Kureishi, etc., and especially my favorite (and contraversial distinction as a post-colonial writer) Irvine Welsh.

i also feel the same way you do about the Shakespeare collection -- my grandmother used to order series of books (i.e., everything by Dickens, major works by Thackery, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc.) and they're all sitting in my parent's house with lovely bindings and printing dates from the early 1950s. i've demanded that my parents will them to me, i being the English major of the family.

yet, i can't imagine when i'll ever get to reading them all, or even re-reading the ones i didn't get to read in high school and college.

though i did read Moby Dick on my own initiative, though.

i was also unemployed at the time.

still, think it's an important thing to express an appreciation, or at least acknowlegement, of the importance of good literature.

and this is coming from a big old po-mo kid.

 

[anitram]

I got a laugh out of seeing Roy's God of Small Things mentioned in there, because I just recently got around to reading that and afterwards I thought, "Well, she's a photogenic lady with props from all the right dissident luminaries, but there is no way in hell six million people read this book."

I can believe 6 million people started the book, but as far as finishing goes...

I do love V.S. Naipaul and I like Anita Desai very much too - certainly more than Roy's fiction. Roy does however, have a poetic way with words that often emerges in her non-fiction writings.

 

[Irvine511]

Roy does however, have a poetic way with words that often emerges in her non-fiction writings.

you mean her functionally insane non-fiction writings?

 

[anitram]

Yes, that's exactly it, LOL. I've never heard anyone put it that way but you've nailed it. From her speeches to her writings, it always feels like she's playing with the language - some very interesting word choice and really unique diction, for example, although she doesn't actually say a lot. It's more like verbal porn. It's been a while since I've looked at her writings (interestingly in a social anthropology class years ago), but I do remember them being all style and very little substance.

 

[Irvine511]

Yes, that's exactly it, LOL. I've never heard anyone put it that way but you've nailed it. From her speeches to her writings, it always feels like she's playing with the language - some very interesting word choice and really unique diction, for example, although she doesn't actually say a lot. It's more like verbal porn. It's been a while since I've looked at her writings (interestingly in a social anthropology class years ago), but I do remember them being all style and very little substance.

yes, exactly.

she's very, very vivid. but crazy.

 

[verte76]

I read controversial books, too, I read "The DaVinci Code", which doesn't have alot of Catholic fans, to put it mildly.